For many months now, your colleagues in the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee leadership have engaged in a series of disparagements and ad hominem attacks about us, apparently as part of a concerted political and fundraising strategy. Just recently, Senator Reid wrote in a DSCC fundraising letter that Republicans are trying to “force through their extreme agenda faster than you can say ‘Koch Brothers.’”

So you can imagine my chagrin when I got a letter from you on June 17 asking us to make five-figure contributions to the DSCC. You followed that up with a voicemail* indicating that, if we contributed heavily enough, we would garner an invitation to join you and other Democratic leaders at a retreat in Kiawah Island this September.

I’m hoping you can help me understand the intent of your request because it’s hard not to conclude that DSCC politics have become so cynical that you actually expect people whom you routinely denounce to give DSCC money.

It is troubling that private citizens taking part in the discourse have become the targets of White House and DSCC fundraising missives, and we would certainly encourage you to rethink that approach. Ultimately, I expect voters will see through that and will weigh the issues on the merits alone. But in the meantime, if you could provide me some insight on what exactly you are asking of us and why, I would be most grateful.

Independence Day might be over, but that doesn’t stop any of us from continuing to feel patriotic! Enjoy the vid:

From the description at YouTube:

5pm on July 1st, 2011 in Orleans, Cape Cod, MA, shoppers stocking up for the 4th of July got a surprise shot of patriotism to start their weekend! This flash mob was organized by http://www.SpiritofAmericaband.org to wish everyone a happy 4th of July!

“This paper has shown that by some measures al-Qaeda’s safe haven in Pakistan has actually become more dangerous in recent years. More serious plots emerged in the West in 2010 linked to established jihadist groups in Pakistan than in any year since al-Qaeda built up its operations in FATA in the early 2000s.”

FATA is the acronym for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the rugged frontier region of Pakistan, where al-Qaeda and its affiliates have set up since the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

In 53% of terror plots, members of the groups involved had trained in Pakistan, compared with 6% in Yemen, 3% in Iraq and 38% where no overseas training occurred, the study says.

Forty-four percent of the plots were directed by jihadist groups in Pakistan, while 6% were directed from Yemen, 3% from Iraq and 47% had no clear overseas direction.

Most of the Western recruits who went to Pakistan had initially wanted to fight NATO forces in Afghanistan but were instead persuaded to return to their home countries to conduct terrorist attacks, it says.

This isn’t to say the Pak government directed these attacks (though in some cases they have), but the central government is chronically weak, and large factions are very sympathetic to al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the jihadist cause overall. They’ve been at best a part-time ally, sometimes giving us important cooperation, sometimes working against us — often at the same time. We’ve tolerated it because we not only need the cooperation we do get (Several al Qaeda bigwigs were nabbed with Pakistani help.), but because our position in Afghanistan has required putting up with a lot to keep supply routes open through the Khyber pass.

But that situation is changing with Obama’s decision to run away withdraw from Afghanistan; we just won’t need that supply route nearly as much.

And if that’s the case, and if so much terrorism originates in Pakistan and the government is unable or unwilling to stop it, why should we keep giving them so much money? Or do we keep paying tribute for fear Pakistani nukes would otherwise wind up in the wrong hands?

UPDATE: And just to add a bit of fuel to the fire, our “allies” were selling nuke secrets to the North Koreans:

The founder of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb program asserts that the government of North Korea bribed top military officials in Islamabad to obtain access to sensitive nuclear technology in the late 1990s.

Abdul Qadeer Khan has made available documents that he says support his claim that he personally transferred more than $3 million in payments by North Korea to senior officers in the Pakistani military, which he says subsequently approved his sharing of technical know-how and equipment with North Korean scientists.

Admittedly, this was in the 1990s, but still, not something you want to see in a responsible friend and partner.